Food poisoning? Something perforated?What?
He had the phone receiver in his hand, was pressing the button.
“Good evening,” came the lilting, sing-song Fijian voice. “How may I help you?”
“Medical emergency,” he said. “We need the ambulance. It’s Mahuta.”
“Of course, Mr. Mahuta,” she said, her tone getting serious. “Straight away.”
“The best hospital,” he realized. “What’s the best?”
“Oceanic Hospitals. Close by, in Suva. It’s private, though, so you’ll have to pay.”
“Not an issue. I’ll pay.”
“Then I’ll tell them to go there when I ring up, but you should tell them as well.”
“My kids,” he realized next.“Ourkids. It’s my partner who’s ill. We need a nanny. Or somebody. Please send somebody.”
“Yes. It may take a few minutes. What shall I tell the ambulance? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. Pain in her abdomen. Appendix, maybe? But she’s bleeding as well. It’s serious.” Skylar was moaning more now, and still rolling. Trying to be quiet, and unable to do it. “Tell them to bloody hurry.”
“Of course. Straight away.”
She rang off, and he thought,What’s ‘straight away’ in Fiji? Please let it really be straight away.He needed to do something to help Skylar, but what? How? He told her, “Hang on. They’re coming. Just hang on.” She didn’t even seem to hear him. She was keening now, a horrible high-pitched sound like the scream of a wounded rabbit.
Scarlett’s voice from the doorway. “Dad?”
He was out of bed, pulling on his shorts and T-shirt, not caring that Scarlett was seeing too much of him. “It’s Skylar,” he said. “She’s ill. I’ve rung for the ambos.” He needed to hold Skylar, but he needed to say this too. “They’re sending a nanny, but I don’t know how—” Skylar’s keening was louder now. “How long it’ll be. I need you and Finlay to be in charge until they come. Tell him I said so, and no fighting. I need your help here. I need your maturity.”
“O-OK,” she said, with no attitude at all.
“Keep the other kids out of here,” he said, because therewas some more noise out there, like they were waking up. “I can’t deal with that now.”
“I’ve got it,” she said, then backed out and closed the door. Zane spared a moment to be grateful, then crawled back onto the bed, got one hand on Skylar’s shoulder and the other on her hair, stroked it as she keened and rolled, and thought,Come on. Hurry up with that ambulance. Come on.
She was in a bright red tunnel of pain. It was all around her, radiating from inside her. Like having the kids, but the worst part. The pushing part. It hurt so much, and it wouldn’t stop. Something was going to break. Something inside was dying.
An eternity of it, barely feeling Zane’s hand on her head, his voice in her ears, just the rolling. Trying to escape, but there was no escape. Then new voices, and other hands on her. Picking her up and putting her onto something, fastening straps around her. On her back, which made the pain worse, and she was sobbing with it now. Voices telling her they had her, that she’d be in hospital soon, that it would be better.
Rolling her out into the lounge, and the sight of the kids’ white faces floating like moons. She wanted to say,Who’ll care for them? They’re not safe,but she couldn’t. Words were beyond her. Zane was behind the men, she knew that, and then she was being lifted into a vehicle and he wasn’t there.
Oh. With the kids. But … but I …
They had something over her nose and mouth now, and there must have been something for the pain in it, because it receded. It was still there, but at a distance, like she was floating above it.
The doors opening. A jolt as the gurney hit the tarmac, and the night sky overhead, then ceiling tiles.Zane,she thought.Zane. Please come. I’m scared. Please come.
Afterwards, Zane knew that it hadn’t been as long as it had felt. Probably not long at all. He was sitting in a nearly deserted lobby after four in the morning when a tired-looking Fijian doctor in green scrubs walked across the floor, stopped before him, and asked, “Are you with Skylar Fairburn?”
“Yeh.” He’d stood as soon as he’d seen the man, and now, his arms were oddly weightless, his skin tingling. He knew this feeling, though he hadn’t had it often. It was fear. “How is she? Is she—is she going to be OK?”
“She should be,” the doctor said. “She’s being prepped for emergency surgery now.”
“Her appendix? Or what?”
“No. An ectopic pregnancy.”
